Final submission

Here's a link to the 4K version on my Google Drive
https://drive.google.com/open?id=19FyqtoYnHwHOkshZtTBJ5wbOa791v738

My name is Maciej Szcześnik, I'm an independent game designer with experience in triple-A projects (mostly The Witcher series). I've always wanted to create a game just by myself and I'm slowly heading towards this goal. I thought that Neon Challenge is the perfect occasion to try and create not only a single scene, but something like a visual benchmark or a target movie. So here it is - a target movie for my dream game set in a dystopian retro-futuristic world where people are forced to "digitalize" themselves. I hope you like it!

Timeline, Cinemachine, Post Processing Stack v2

I used Cinemachine for all the camera work. Timeline was used for animating just about everything. Post Processing Stack v2 was used from the very beginning to quickly establish the mood of the scenes. I also used some custom scripts to make things a bit easier:

The dialogue text is animated by script (a simple "text writer effect"). The same method was used for the computer terminal text in the last scene.

Police signal lights on the motorbikes are also animated with a script - they are looped so it was easier to write a few lines of code than to create animations for timeline.

Seeker search light is looking at a target with a LookAt() function. The target is animated with the Timeline.

Useful Timeline trick

I've observed that if you put an object onto the timeline and add an animation clip to it, it will take the position from the animation (so it will be moved to the 0, 0, 0 coordinates). I've handled that by parenting animated objects (such as characters) to empty objects, that I could then move freely through the whole scene and position as I wanted.

Added scenes

At first I just wanted to create one scene. It took me about two weeks (from initial concept to current stage). I've received a huge positive feedback after uploading it. That, plus the fun I had when playing with Timeline, pushed me to create two additional scenes for the final piece. As I was already familiar with Timeline and Cinemachine the work was pretty fast. It took me just 3 days to design, create, animate and render those two additional sequences.

Making of

I've prepared two making of videos, where I describe the process:

Creating the scenes - the mood goes first

In every case I started with setting the mood first. I used Cinemachine to set the desired camera angle, and Hx Volumetric Lighting plugin to create the atmosphere. Here you can find work in progress GIFs of the scenes:

References

I didn't use any specific concept art for creating the scenes, but I was inspired by:

Stranger Things

Cyberpunk 2020 (the paper RPG)

Bladerunner

Jakub Różalski's art (one of my favorite artists)

Simon Stalenhag's art (also one of my favorite artists)

Elysium

Chappie

Conclusion

I've proven myself that Timeline and Cinemachine is the way to go with target movies. It was really fast and efficient. I've managed to learn a lot about my dream game. It looks like it's the high time to finally start working on it :).

Screens

You can find some screens from the movie below.

Used Assets

I used a lot of additional assets to speed up my work (I have a huge collection of assets built gradually since the Asset Store launch).

Advanced Foliage Pack (used for those small bushes and grass):
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/environments/advanced-foliage-pack-1-103151

Amplify Color (used for prototyping the final look with LUT textures):
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/vfx/shaders/fullscreen-camera-effects/amplify-color-1894

Cinemachine (used for all camera movements and animations):
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/essentials/cinemachine-79898

My own assets

I used Mixamo Fuse for building the base of the characters. Blender and Substance Painter for detailing them and creating other assets including the robots, computer terminal, hovercraft (Seeker) and the car in the middle.

AhmedI have to say that I am amazed by what you have produced within the deadline as this is almost a game and not only a cut-scene

That was my goal. I wanted to check what the game could look like. Creating a target movie is indeed a great way to check the possibilities. This runs at 100FPS on my machine (i7, 32GB RAM, GeForce 970GTX), obviously without supersampling (just temporal antialiasing). I will most probably continue to design this way. I will also try to create a tutorial on how one can create a target movie in Unity.